


Three of a Kind

by evitably



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: 3 Things, Gen, Introspection, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evitably/pseuds/evitably
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yona, Hak, and Soo-Won: Before, during, and after. Or: the things they will never say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three of a Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [undomielregina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undomielregina/gifts).



> undomielregina asked to see Yona learning how to be a good queen, Hak's ambivalence over teaching Yona how to fight, and Soo-Won being an ambiguous villain. I hope I delivered!
> 
> Many thanks to M for betaing and being an awesome listening board!

Yona has learnt at an early age to be careful about what she wishes for. Some things, she knows, her father will gladly give her. Other things he either can't or won't, and Yona has kept those wishes tucked away in the back of her mind until she forgets she has ever wanted them in the first place.

Freedom is one such thing, cut down after her mother's assassination. Independence is another, buried behind a mountain of words that essentially mean she has nothing to worry about. Safety in her own home from the courtiers who seek her father's favour, locked away behind the vague impression that she could start a war.

Affection, and time, and attention -- all these, she doesn't think he would give her.

She never asks.

Whenever Hak and Soo-Won are with her she never even thinks of asking. They are her parents, her protectors, her playmates. They are brave and loyal and strong, and they are everything she wants to be.

"Don't be silly," Hak says. "You don't have to be us, you'll _have_ us." And as much as that makes her want to stomp on his foot, knowing that he intends to stay with her makes her heart swell double its size.

"You should learn something we don't know," Soo-Won declares, forever his practical and far-thinking self. "If you end up being like us, you won't need us, right? And we won't need you. So we should all learn different things so we'll all need each other always."

Soo-Won's answer makes her heart grow thrice its size.

"But I don't know what you don't know," she says. "And how will I know that you won't learn it too anyway?"

Hak says, "It'll probably be too boring for us anyway."

Soo-Won throws a handful of weeds at Hak; Hak sticks his tongue out at him, but Soo-Won is looking at Yona, not Hak. "You'll just have to trust us," he tells Yona.

She mulls over his words for some moments. She doesn't have an issue trusting Soo-Won. Even Hak, as laidback and contrary as he is, has always been someone she's trusted to tell her when she's doing the wrong thing, and that isn't something she will ever be able to take for granted.

Finally, she nods. "Okay," she says and straightens her back, and sets her shoulders, and she means every single word when she says: "I'm going to learn how to be the best princess ever, then."

She has no idea how long the path she's set herself on will take.

And to be entirely truthful, she doesn't really care.

*

Hak's shoulders relax as soon as he steps away from the immediate vicinity of the camp. The silence around him isn't a total quiet, but it lacks the mayhem that Hak's come to expect when travelling in as big and colourful a group as he's found himself part of.

He still can't believe it. _Dragons_. Of all the ridiculous things he's ever entertained inside his head (... and there are quite a few of those), _dragons_ has never been one of them.

Figures.

Princess Yona always did draw to her the strange and absurd -- Hak himself included.

Hak likes being out on water-drawing duty. It's been happening more and more often, now that the princess taking over hunting for the group. He likes the sounds the wilderness makes and the way he has to watch his feet but not look for kindling. He likes having a clear goal of where something is and going to get it, and not looking in shrubbery for a bird he'd just shot down.

He returns to camp just in time to see Jae-Ha and Zeno trying to teach Ao to steal bits and pieces of food behind Yoon's back, Shin-Ah gone to collect tinderwood, and to Kija painstakingly gutting what looks like a rabbit while Princess Yona looks on and asks for pointers.

She has blood on her cheek and on her hands, and one of her curls looks rough, coarse, and out of place, and even though the forest around them is getting dark, Hak fancies it's a darker red than Princess Yona's hair.

His heart squeezes once, painfully, in the cavity of his ribcage. He did this to her, and she had thanked him and asked for more.

"Hak!" Yoon calls, dragging Hak's attention away from the blood on the princess's sun-kissed face.

"Got the water," Hak says, coming closer to Yoon and handing him one of the pouches. "Anything happen while I was gone?"

"Jea-Ha jumped into a tree branch," says Yoon. "Managed to bring down a bunch of nuts, which he _should_ be cracking instead of stealing food."

"I'll do it," Princess Yona says behind Hak, and he almost jumps up into her chin himself in surprise. He hadn't heard her come up behind him. She doesn't pay him much mind, just goes around him to where Yoon has put the bag of gathered nuts next to him.

"Isn't your arm still sore?" Yoon asks.

The princess smiles. "A little, but don't worry, I'm fine."

"Sore?" Hak asks, zeroing-in on the princess's hands. They're callused, bruised, swollen, red with animal blood and from the cold wind, but he can't see anything that would stop her from cracking nuts.

"I pulled a muscle in my shoulder when I took a shot at the rabbit," she explains.

Hak nods, but his fingers twitch at his sides. How he'd like to tell Princess Yona to take it easy and rest, that he'd crack those stupid nuts in her place, that she shouldn't dirty her hands with the blood of living things and her skin with a tan. It's at times like these that Princess Yona seems the most real to him -- an actual human being teetering on the cusp of adulthood, stretching out her feet and hands and finding them surprisingly dependable and competent.

"I'll go help Shin-Ah," he says abruptly and turns his back to camp again, heart thudding hard in his chest.

Because that line of thought isn't for someone like him to contemplate.

*

The future is a tentative yet sharp thorn in Soo-Won's side. It is something Soo-Won often finds himself contemplating and quantifying and qualifying, and the idea of it just as often makes Soo-Won wake up in cold sweat as it makes him work harder, plan better, move faster.

He knows down to the marrow of his bones that his days are numbered.

He doesn't know what will get him first. A traitor, as poetic justice for having killed King Il? A stray mercenary on the road, seeing Soo-Won for noble-born, but not the king that he is?

Or perhaps it would be either Hak or Yona who would try to take his head, his heart, his blood, and he would stand frozen to the spot, incapable of raising his sword against them again, and let them?

He hopes he will be able to bring Kouka back from the brink of destruction that King Il has brought it to, that he will be able to provide healthy foundations to the kingdom's infrastructure, that he will be able to marry ( _not yona, never her, by his own hand_ ) and have an heir, that he will live to see wrinkles in his face.

He fears not having done enough by the time he dies. He fears that the nobility will discover what he's done, that he'll leave a wreck of a kingdom behind, that now that he knows the flavour of betrayal, he will taste it again and again and again. Sometimes he fears standing in front of Yona, in front of Hak, and being forgiven. 

But most often, most of all, he fears standing in front of them and knowing that by killing King Il, he may have made a horrible, unfixable mistake.


End file.
